Justiciable Tears
by writergal24
Summary: When Grandma Granger passes away, Rose eavesdrops on a conversation between Hugo and Albus. Entry to Morning Lilies' Forgotten Family Ties Competition! Oneshot.


**This is my first entry to Morning Lilies' Forgotten Family Ties Competition (there may be another one). My pair was Albus/Hugo and my prompt was tears.**

**I don't own Harry Potter because, if I did, I wouldn't be thinking about how I should really do some homework...**

**Hope you enjoy!**

Rose Weasley felt like she'd been dumped into an icy bucket. The shock… the numbness…

Grandma Granger was dead?

She'd gotten the letter early that morning, before breakfast even, and she had spent her morning classes lying in bed, crying. Her grandmother had apparently fallen ill unexpectedly and the doctors hadn't been able to do anything about it. That was the only information Rose's father had disclosed in his letter. He had also said he would try to come to Hogwarts that weekend to see Rose and her brother Hugo.

Rose lay in her room all day, alternating between bouts of sorrow over her grandmother's death and the guilt of missing her classes.

Telling Hugo had been the hardest part. She did it at lunch. After staring at her food for a few minutes and receiving sympathetic looks and apologies for her loss from all of her cousins – whom Albus had undoubtedly told – she'd walked over to her brother and asked him to take a walk with her. They went out onto the school grounds, towards Hagrid's, but they stopped before they were even halfway there and sat down on the hill.

To say that he'd been upset when she'd shown him the letter was a complete understatement. He'd stormed off in a mix of tears and rage and she hadn't seen him since.

And now Rose had arrived in the Great Hall for supper. Albus led her in. Though she was usually so strong and independent, Rose needed someone to lean on that day. Rose went to the Gryffindor table and scanned it for Hugo's red head.

She found a bunch of red heads belonging to her cousins, but Hugo was nowhere to be seen.

Hugo was the baby of the Weasleys. He was only 11. Rose herself was 15, almost 16.

Albus was about to leave her to head to the Slytherin table when Rose stopped him. "We have to go find him," she said. Al looked at the food on his table with a puppy-dog like expression, but he nodded and walked over to his brother.

"James," Albus whispered, "Can we borrow the map?"

James Sirius Potter looked up at his brother, slightly annoyed. Couldn't Albus _see_ that James was talking to Jessica Brown-Thomas, one of the hottest girls at Hogwarts? "Are you looking for Hugo?" James asked, hoping this would go fast.

Albus and Rose nodded.

"He's by Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," James hissed.

Albus was confused, but Rose understood. "How do you know?" she asked.

"Saw him before. I think he was trying to hide, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it."

Rose nodded. "Wait, James, how do you know where Moaning Myrtle's bathroom is?" she asked her cousin with a raised eyebrow.

James shook his head. "You don't want to know."

They left James – _Thank Merlin, _James thought – and Rose led Albus up to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

Hugo was sitting in the corner of the hallway, crying softly.

The second Rose laid eyes on him, she could feel the teardrops in her own eyes start to well up again, though she couldn't imagine how there were more left in her.

Albus held up a hand to stop her. "I'll go talk to him."

"Are you sure?" Rose asked skeptically.

Hugo tended to be a bit moody. If he had a chance of listening to anyone, it would probably be Rose herself. Plus, Hugo and Albus weren't that close. Of course they'd played together when they were younger, but now Albus spent more time with his older, sometimes more-Slytherin friends rather than his first-year cousin.

"Yes," Albus said. "You go down and eat dinner. You need some food."

Well, he was right about that…

Rose smiled. "Thank you."

Rose was around the corner and about to leave when she heard the boys talking. And, oh, she couldn't help herself. She had to stop and listen.

"Hey, Hugo," she heard Albus say softly.

There was a lot of sniffling on Hugo's end. "I'm… I'm not crying," Hugo insisted. Rose peeked around the corner and saw him wiping underneath his eyes furiously.

"It's okay to cry," Al said.

Hugo mumbled something under his breath.

"Pardon?" Albus questioned.

Hugo mumbled something again, but Rose still couldn't hear it.

Suddenly Albus got a lot louder. "What do you mean James told you not to cry? Merlin, I'm going to kill him."

Hugo's eyes widened as his cousin. "Please don't!" he begged. He looked genuinely scared for James' life.

Rose's heart just about broke.

Albus smiled sympathetically. "I won't. I'm not a Gryffindor. I'm not brave enough, remember?" Albus winked at Hugo.

Albus was the only one out of all the Potter-Weasley clan – including Teddy – to not have been sorted into Gryffindor. The boys (and sometimes the girls) teased him relentlessly about this. The amount of "Ah! It's a big scary Slytherin!" jokes that Al received was ridiculous. But the funniest part was that when somebody outside of the family made fun of him about it, all of his cousins who had just been teasing him instantly jumped to his defense and hexed the bully into the next century.

Hugo didn't laugh at Albus' self-bashing.

"James is an idiot, Hugo," Albus insisted. "He doesn't know what he's talking about. And I bet you that James has cried a million times more than you have."

Hugo looked at Al in wonder. "James has cried before?"

Rose had to stifle a laugh with the back of her hand.

"Oh, yeah," Albus told him with a laugh. "Do you remember our owl Granddad?"

Hugo frowned. "No. You had an owl named Granddad?"

Albus rolled his eyes. "Lily was two. She thought the owl looked like Granddad. Don't ask me. Anyway, he died when I was five, so James was seven, and you were probably just one, so you wouldn't remember him. When Granddad the owl died, James cried like a little girl."

"But he was seven," Hugo insisted. "That's different."

"James also cried the year he was ten when Teddy left for Hogwarts because he wasn't going."

"He was only ten."

"You're eleven," Albus pointed out.

Hugo puffed up his chest, releasing his inner Uncle Percy. Percy, his daughter Molly, and Hugo were the only ones in the Weasley family capable of that kind of pride. "Eleven is _much_ older than ten," Hugo told Albus pompously.

Now Rose really had to hold in the giggles.

"Alright, fine. This summer, when James' girlfriend sent him an owl saying she was breaking up with him, he bawled and wouldn't come out of his room for days. Lily was the only one he would talk to, so she had to bring him food for every meal. That was when he was 17." Albus smiled having finally found an example that Hugo couldn't poo-poo because of James' age.

"He cried because his girlfriend broke up with him?" Hugo exclaimed, wrinkling his nose. Hugo still thought girls outside of his family had cooties. He was the only one of the Weasley/Potters who still did.

"Uh huh. So how can he tell you that you aren't allowed to cry?" Albus asked.

"James can be really mean," Hugo said.

Al made a face. "Let's put it this way. Does Rose ever do things that you don't like?" he asked Hugo.

Rose leaned forward to hear the answer.

Hugo nodded. "Yes. All of the time. She always takes a really long time in the bathroom, and she never lets me choose the channel on the telly."

Albus didn't know much about televisions because he didn't have one, but he'd watched some shows at Rose and Hugo's house. He didn't fully understand this concept, but he nodded anyway. "Even though she does that," Albus continued, "You still love her, don't you?"

Hugo sighed. "Yes."

"Right. Because she's your sister. So James can do horrible things, stupid things, things that all normal people would realize were idiotic, but I still have to love him because he's my brother," Albus said.

"Even when he cries over girls and makes fun of other people for crying?"

"Even then."

"Do I always have to love James too? Because he's my cousin?" Hugo questioned.

Albus glanced at the wall that Rose was peeping out from behind. _He knew she was still there!_ "Yeah. I think you do." _Perhaps, _Rose thought, _He's thinking of all of the times that we've gotten in fights._

"Good," Hugo said. "Because I still do."

"Well, good. Now do you want to go get some dinner? I'm _starving_ and I bet you are too," Albus said, standing up and grabbing Hugo's hand to pull him up too.

The boys walked in the opposite direction of Rose, talking about how hungry they were and how they were already excited for Grandma Weasley's Christmas dinner, though it was only October. Rose smiled and watched them walk off together.

**I wanted to throw some ScoRose in there, but I couldn't find a place for it to fit. Plus, it was a story about Hugo and Albus. Rose just served as my narrator.**

**Please, please let me know what you thought! I love reviews.**

**~writergal24**


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